the trouble is my head won't let me forget
by Agent of the Apothecary
Summary: -AU- This is bad. This is a degree of bad so terrible that it has been, until this point, uncharted and left unremarked upon. Lizzie is writing the damn definitive work on A Meal This Bad.


**Story:** the trouble is my head won't let me forget

**Summary:** This is _bad_. This is a degree of bad so terrible that it has been, until this point, uncharted and left unremarked upon. Lizzie Greene is writing the damn definitive work on A Meal This Bad.

**Notes:** I wrote this in my P&P AU flurry of activity a few months ago—good Lord, I think it's actually been a year—but I only got down the first bit and had no idea to go from there. Turns out finals gave me the last spot of inspiration I needed. Consider it a retelling of the infamous dinner party. Also, I absolutely _adored_ writing Caroline, she filled me with delighted wonder and hatred. Bitchy characters make me happy. Once again, you need to have read P&P to have any idea what the hell is going on. Experimental storyline warning.

* * *

Lizzie knows that she can be, at times, a bit _abrasive_, but does he really need to rub it in her face in such a horribly cocky fashion? She can tell—there's a bit of smirk on the corner of his lips, it's his I'm A Righteous Prick, Aren't I? expression, and she truly does despise it.

"I don't know what on earth _you_ think you can laugh about," she whispers as she slams by him, clutching the potatoes to her chest for dear life. "You have absolutely _no moral high ground_ in this situation _whatsoever_."

"I didn't say anything," he replies, looking straight across the table. "You missed a bit of the gravy, by the way."

"Oh, shut it," she hisses, and returns from the kitchen a few moments later with a bottle of red wine; honestly, the situation couldn't be any worse at this point, and liquor might actively improve everyone's impressions come morning.

They're still talking about Tennyson when she comes back; Mary is still off on one of her Holier Than Thou kicks and Caroline is eyeing her reflection on the back of a spoon—but even Caroline cannot be that self-absorbed, which means she is being ironic. Bloody _hell_.

(There is, in fact, a bit of gravy on the edge of the tablecloth. Lizzie hates him. She hates him. She wants to pluck out his eyeballs and roast them on a fork over the stove.)

"Wine!" says Lizzie as brightly as she can, kicking the kitchen door shut behind her. "Jane, would you like a top-up?"

"Oh, that'd be brilliant," says Lydia. "I am bored out of my _mind_." She makes a grab for the bottle, which Lizzie deftly out-maneuvers.

"Nice try," she says, "but you're on ginger ale probation, after last time." Lydia pouts and flings herself back in her seat, tapping her foot theatrically and just generally being annoying. Lizzie swallows irritation and a few of her patented "abrasive" (and _where_, exactly, does Will Darcy get off calling her that, regardless of the relative veracity of that statement?) comments.

"Charlie?" she asks.

"Oh, no, I'm all right," he says, still starting dottily at Jane. "Jane, would you like any?"

"No, thank you, Lizzie," she murmurs, and twirls her fork a bit. She looks so bloody perfect and adorable that, were she not Lizzie's best friend, she would be dangerously close to having all of her hair cut off in the middle of the night. Even her blushes are even and smoothed into her complexion, for goodness' sake. Lizzie just looks like a tomato when she blushes (which is not often, because Lizzie Greene does not _do_ blushes, or embarrassment, or mortal agony induced by insipid housemates).

"All right, then," says Lizzie, and turns with her teeth clenched to Caroline and Louisa. "A bit of red wine, girls?"

"I'm afraid I've got a bit of a headache, love," says Caroline, tilting a smirk at Lizzie over the rim of her thick cats-eyes glasses. She is rocking, much to Lizzie's terrible, seething hatred, the black-on-black artsy look, and rocking it well. Hating Caroline would be so much easier if she were a horrible dresser.

"I'll take a bit," Louisa interrupts, waving her glass under Lizzie's nose. "I need to get this horrid taste out of my mouth . . ."

That would be Lizzie's mother's pesto and bechamel lasagna. Lizzie imagines grabbing the red wine by the neck of the bottle and slamming it, quickly, on top of Louisa's head.

"Of course," mutters Lizzie through her teeth, and pours Louisa a generous amount of what Will _bloody fucking arse_ Darcy would call a "sub-par vintage."

Speak of the devil. "Wine?" she cuts out tersely.

"No, thanks," he says. "Do you have water?"

"It's in the pitcher on the side table," she replies, and turns on her heel. She puts the bottle in the middle of the table and settles back in her seat as Mary, who had politely paused for Lizzie's trip around the table, begins to speak again. Fanny is giggling to herself at the head of the table, unsurprisingly, and Lizzie stifles the urge to slam her forehead against the table.

This is _bad_. This is a degree of bad so terrible that it has been, until this point, uncharted and left unremarked upon. Lizzie Greene is writing the damn definitive work on A Meal This Bad.

As she swirls her glass a bit more forcefully than necessary and sneaks a look at Charlie and Jane, Mary starts quoting Ani DiFranco.

(Lizzie eyes the bread knife. She can probably get blood out of the linens if she soaks them in salt and cream of tartar immediately.)

Charlie whispers something, gesturing with his hands to make a box shape, and Jane giggles, biting her lip to muffle the sound. She's always hated girls that giggled. Generally Lizzie hates girls that giggle as well, but as this is _Jane_, Lizzie is preternaturally inclined, rather like the rest of the population, to find everything she does charming.

"You're distracted," says Will Darcy.

Lizzie swallows a mouthful of wine, wishing for tequila, and squares her shoulders. "Am I?" she says politely, turning her attention to him.

"Yes," he replies, smirking a bit (that _prat_). "You're a darling hostess, Elizabeth."

Lizzie's mouth spasms into a grimace before she can stop it. Through her left ear, she can hear Mary teetering off the edge of full-fledged singing and down the abyss towards _belting_. Fuck. "Thank you," she says, gritting her teeth at him.

"You really must have us back again some time," he says, and he is a _cretin_ and she _hates_ him, and she hopes he will go and curl up in a corner and _die_ somewhere.

"I'll do my best," she replies, and stands. "Mary, Lydia, would you mind helping me in the kitchen? Jane, why don't you and Fanny show everybody around the house a bit?"

Fanny, for a university-sanctioned chaperone, is terribly tipsy. She is a positively horrid housemother, but she blinks a bit charmingly as she rises to her feet and teeters. "Oh yes, that's a lovely idea, Lizzie," she says. "But why doesn't Lydia come with me to show off the house? She's so much better at the tours than Kat."

"Kat's a wonderful guide," says Lizzie, and grabs Lydia around the upper arm before she can make a break for it. Fucking _abrasive_. She hopes Will Darcy realizes how hard it is for her right now to not slam her fist into his smug little prattish nose. Bloody patrician bloodlines. Bloody patrician _prats_.

He is smirking, when she hazards a look at him.

_Arsehat_.

If she didn't believe that Jane and Charlie were more perfect than anyone other than Sady Doyle had a right to be, she would not have put herself through this ridiculous sham. True Love is not enough incentive to spend a large amount of time with Will Darcy, who is even now loitering as the rest of the party files out.

"Can I help you?" asks Lizzie, raising an eyebrow. She is rather proud of her eyebrow. She hopes it looks murderous.

Will Darcy watches her for a few inscrutable seconds.

"…no," he finally says.

Lizzie hefts the silver plate and imagines bashing Will Darcy's face in with it. She can hear the crunch of his patrician nose as she does so. It is satisfying in its succinctness. Instead of inflicting violence that she is fairly certain Will Darcy will sue her for, she cracks her knuckles and (strategically) retreats to the kitchen.

* * *

Caroline absolutely despises the Bennet house and its irritant inhabitants and Jane's sketches on the wall and that ridiculous little fat one's music blaring through tired, rusty speakers, and she rather wishes that her brother would stop being such a darling _idiot_ and fuck the chit already.

"This is _excruciating_," she whispers under her breath to Louisa, who is shoveling a truly despicable amount of whatever Lizzie Greene threw together in her cauldron into her gaping maw. "Does Charlie honestly expect us to find any of them charming?" She pauses, looking at Jane, who is delicately spearing a slice of asparagus with both utensils and sparing a glance—under her lashes, and Caroline knows exactly what _that_ look means, she practically invented it, but it's better with darker hair—for Charlie. "Expect for maybe Jane Rutherford, I find her dullness somewhat calming compared to the others."

"Hmm," says Louisa, who may be a bit of a cow but at least swallows before she speaks (in more ways than one, but Caroline is the sort of sister who doesn't listen and tell—at least not out of the family). "You don't find all this shyness to be a bit—I don't know, contrived? After all, it's the bloody twenty-first century, how many women like that are really left, outside of Saudi fucking Arabia?"

"You're terrible," murmurs Caroline, allowing her lips to twist into a brightly biting smirk. "What do you think, Darce? Is Jane Rutherford the _real deal_?"

"Perhaps," mutters Will from her left, where he has left most of his lasanga curled into a sad pile in the middle of his place. "Charlie's making enough of a fool out of himself for the both of them, does she really need to be that overt?"

The three stop and look at the couple at the other end of the table for a few considering seconds. Charlie has that half-baked look in his eyes, a glaze forming in the corners, and Jane Rutherford looks in a tizzy, barely able to catch her breath and yet enjoying herself immensely. Caroline is a veteran in making men believe themselves to be worshipped, and even she is (only slightly) impressed by her level of devotion.

"Well, she's a magnificent lying cunt," says Caroline finally, and sips at her glass of wine. It is acidic and terrible and she's not that surprised, as it is _Lizzie _fucking _Greene's_ dinner party and no doubt the chit would've bought a box of Chardonnay if she thought she could get away with it.

"_Caroline_!" hisses Louisa warningly, shooting a look around the table. Caroline doesn't know why she is so worried; the disgrace of a house mother is holding court down at the opposite end, and the fat one and the perpetually drunk one are too busy competing for attention to listen, and Lizzie Greene has retired to the kitchen to pick up another bottle and some more gravy for the fat one.

She smiles to herself and also Will Darcy, after a moment's pause. "Oh, stop worrying Louisa. They're all far too gone to listen to anything silly old me has to say." She tilts her head back so her glasses slide up her nose without her having to push them, and she brings her chin down so she is pointed towards Will. "Having fun, yet, William?"

"Marvelous, Caroline, truly," he says, and takes a forecful swallow of his water. She doesn't know why he's not drinking tonight—were there any occasion that called for beligerent drunkeness, she thinks an evening amongst the grossly lower class and dreadfully _loud_ Bennet House inhabitants would be it—but she appreciates his sobriety. It makes the antics of the rest of the table seem much more drastic in comparison, and if Will is on her side she can probably wean Charlie off of Jane Rutherford in another week or so.

This is provided Will doesn't fall for the hideously indelicate Miss Greene first, admittedly, but Caroline isn't too concerned on that score. William, as past experience has dictated, prefers his women tall, slender, brunette, and fabulously wealthy. Lizzie is three out of four, admittedly, but she has a face like a Pomeranian and her hair cut always screams that it was done with a pair of rusty kitchen shears.

"Cheers," mutters Caroline, and grimaces as she swallows. Bloody _painful_, and she doesn't just mean the quality of the liquor.

"I don't know what you mean," says the fat one loudly, cutting through what had become quite a remarkably low level of noise. "I know Lizzie's the _patented feminist_ in the house, but I find Tennyson's work tiresome from a female perspective."

"Oh, you're full of _shit_," giggles the perpetually drunk one. "You're practically fucking quoting one of Lizzie's midnight rants on the oppression of male society. You need to at least a passing familiarity with some of his poems to have an opinion, _Mare_."

"Yes, thank you, why don't you go back to your frat parties, Lydia, and leave the literary analysis to the big boys and girls?" suggests the fat one. "I recommend you learn to _read_ before contributing again."

Caroline feels a bit as though she is at a zoo, in the cage with all the large monkeys in it. She has always hated the zoo, excepting the tigers—always amusingly droll at meal times, rather like her mother setting in on her father about his expenses, quietly unassuming until a vulnerability presents itself, at which point she strikes—and this is not helping her to revise her opinion. She has read Tennyson, quite extensively, and finds fucking obese Mary-Whatsis to be a pseudo-entitled _moron_.

After all, Lousia is an entitled moron; Caroline has experience diagnosing this ailment, and she's not about to give a egregiously huge twat a free pass because her house-mate is attempting to sleep with Caroline's brother. Caroline considers, for a brief moment, contributing to the discussion at hand, and then decides against it. She's much better at being the bitterly amused bystander, mocking and sardoinc, and she's absolutely brilliantly dressed for it—black on black on black, with lots of silver rings and truly beautiful boots. She hopes Will Darcy appreciates it, but she mostly enjoys the sensation of being the most gloriously dressed person in the room.

"If you listen to Ani DiFranco," continues the fat one loudly, waving her hand, "you've probably heard this already, but—"

Oh for _fuck's_ sake. "If he doesn't shag the bint within the next week, I am moving us to fucking Zimbabwe," hisses Caroline to no one in particular.

* * *

They are fluttering around dizzily, like butterflies on their last legs of life, come six o'clock. Jane has given up looking out the window and is instead concentrating all of her attention on the table settings, which she has done and redone four times in the past hour. She catches Lizzie on the elbow as the latter makes to sprint past, and points to the centerpiece. "It's not too much, is it, Lizzie? I don't want them to find us vulgar."

"With Lydia at the table, that centerpiece doesn't have a chance," says Lizzie, and takes a closer look at Jane's face. Immediately, sympathy overwhelms her features. "Oh, don't fret, Jane, it'll be all right! You're absolutely disgustingly charming, and Fanny can be adorable provided we don't let her go on about Lydia, and I'm sure deep within me are wells of hospitality and good cheer eagerly awaiting being unearthed."

"You're lovely," reproves Jane, and she mostly thinks that it is true, although Will Darcy has been known in the past to bring out the worst in Lizzie, all that is violent and brilliant and sharp at the corners. She rather thinks he enjoys it, in fact, for all that he has professed to despising her.

Lizzie laughs and shifts her plate of frozen noodles to the other arm, wrapping her hand around Jane's shoulders and squeezing gently. "_You're_ the lovely one, Jane, and Charlie is atrociously in love with you. It sickens me, it really does."

She cannot help the laughter that rises in response, and Lizzie grins. "Ah-ha! Go on like that, and Charlie Bingley is going to be off his heels for you, I guarantee it. More than he already is, at least."

"Get off it," whispers Jane, pushing Lizzie lightly towards the kitchen. "Go and work your culinary magic, Lizzie."

Lizzie's responding laughter is sharp and self-depricating. "The only magic I'm capable of working in a kitchen is the black, poisonous kind, Jane, which is why we're all eternally grateful all I have to do tonight is operate the 'defrost' mechanism of an oven. It's up to you to bring Charlie round."

Off Lizzie goes, bringing most of the laughter of the room out with her, and Jane is left in the picturesque half-twilight she has worked hard to fabricate, the product of carefully measured candles and sporadic bunches of wildflowers and a linen tablecloth she spent hours soaking in various homemade remedies to bleach back to some sort of half-remnant of white. She worries, as is her way, for a moment or two, if she has tried too hard. She desperately wants Charlie's family to like her and the haphazard family she has found herself a part of, but she is aware that no amount of antique linen will make Lydia less brazen or Mary less studiously indignant.

She taps her finger against the side of one of the wineglasses, and it rings out gently. Not as full as true crystal, but it still has a slight reverberance, more than plastic would. She is absurdly pleased by this, by the delicate spread of linen and lace and glass, the cream of the (mismatched, but she hopes charmingly so) plates and the heavy bottoms of the silverware.

Mary comes through the room abruptly, slamming doors and banging against the cupboards. "That bloody _Lydia_," she half-screams, "I am going to _murder_ her." Jane moves around the sides of the table to wrap Mary, who is close enough to tears that she is vibrating, in her arms. Mary snuffles against her shoulder and lets out a sigh with a quivering hitch. "I _hate_ her," she murmurs, vehemently, and Jane runs soft fingers through her hair.

"Shh," she says, softly, "you know Lydia is rash and a bit of an insensitive git sometimes…"

Mary gives off a watery laugh and says, "I am not _obese_, I am _rotund_, and just because she's a bulemic little bitch doesn't mean I have to be the size of a wafer." Having determined this, Mary rises out from the circle of Jane's arms and runs a few fingers through the hair Jane has soothed, tussling it and laughing. "I'm going to go bother Lizzie horrendously," she says, "don't go waiting too long by the window, Lady Elaine."

Laughing to herself, full-bodied and rich like chocolate and the Bordeaux Jane and Charlie had shared over dinner the week before, Mary goes off into the kitchen. Over the hiss of the gas flushing the stove and Lizzie rinsing the asparagus in the sink, Jane can hear Mary's bright, "Hey Liz, need any help?"

Whatever Lizzie replies, it is lost in the rush of the Jane's blood to her ears, as she hears the crunch of the gravel in the drive and Charlie's leaping steps on the porch stairs. She forces herself to calm, crinkles the fabric of her skirt between her fingers and breathes, deeply, in and _out_, and then she is walking towards the front step before the bell buzzes.

She beats Fanny, perched at the top of the stairs in cohoots with Lydia and Kat, Lizzie who comes reluctantly from the kitchen, her elbow hooked by a determined Mary, and even Thomas, who spends the majority of his time asleep on the hooked rug at the foot of the stairs.

"_Hi_," she says breathlessly, despite the mad rush of Thomas scrambling to his feet and hissing theatrically and Fanny thundering down the stairs and Lizzie scowling as she wipes her hands on a sooty dishcloth.

"Hullo," says Charlie, framed brightly in the door frame.

For a second, Jane can only smile at him. Then, remembering herself with a hot blush, she steps a bit to the side. "Won't you come in?"


End file.
